About 200 foreigners have sought refuge at a police station in Rustenburg following Wednesday torching of six buildings believed to be drug dens by South Africans.

This is according to the chairperson of the African Diaspora Forum (ADF)‚ Marc Gbaffou.

He call for all stakeholders to work together to root out all criminals. “We [the ADF] are against any criminal activity; it does not matter who committed it.”

Gbaffou said it was disingenuous to call this a crime of a specific nation. “Foreign communities are easily connoted as criminals.”

He said all foreigners living in Rustenburg live in fear. “They are scared. They have since shut their businesses as they are scared the community might retaliate and attack them.”

Gbaffou said that as much as the diaspora forum supported crime eradication it did not support people taking the law into their own hands.

Police said that Wednesday’s arson could have been sparked by the arrest of a man who had allegedly raped a teenager as well as that of a police officer who was found in possession of drugs at the same place.

Gbaffou said the crowd of about 50 people who torched the buildings should have reported the crime. “And if that does not bear any fruit‚ then it would help to find out what next level of authority to escalate it to.”

In an effort to intervene‚ the diaspora forum said it plans to meet the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) next week.